#Martian methane sniffer adapted for Earth WHAT'S that gassy smell? The hypersensitive methane detector on NASA's Mars rover curiosity is being repurposed to ferret out gas leaks On earth.
The Pacific gas and electric company in San francisco and global energy giant Chevron are testing a handheld earthbound version that is 1000 times as sensitive as existing methane sniffers.
It's the same technology as on Mars she says. When it picks up trace amounts of methane it kind of sings to the operator
#World's first space detective agency launched IN THE MIDDLE of a boundary squabble with your neighbour? Want to find out who is dumping waste near your house?
You need to call the space detectives. Satellite imaging specialist Raymond Harris and space lawyer Raymond Purdy both at University college London have launched just Air & Space Evidence Ltd of London the world's first space detective agency.
The pair intend to use their combined experience of space-based photographic databases and Earth observation privacy law to ensure that people can wield authentic imagery that stands up in court.
They want everyone to have the chance to use space imagery to settle legal disputes from homeowners disputing garden boundaries to businesses fighting vehicle theft.
Insurers might find it useful in investigating fraud and councils in tackling environmental assaults such as waste incineration or illegal logging and quarrying.
And it won't cost much more than having your house surveyed Harris says. It might seem a simple matter for someone to use Google earth say
For instance people cannot be given sure a satellite was working on the day in question or that the area of land imaged is actually the land at issue.
The space detectives will use their expertise in commissioning space images to order and their familiarity with the databases of space image suppliers like Digital Globe of Longmont Colorado.
We can make a difference by ensuring space images have audit trails that stand up says Purdy.
But most of the work will involve images taken by orbiting satellites especially as recent earth observation start-ups like Planet Labs
and Skybox Imaging make inexpensive space imagery more widely available. Paul Champion a private investigator based in Cardiff UK
and a governor of the Association of British Investigators says the notion of space-based detection is fascinating.
There is a need for space detectives says Joanne Wheeler a space lawyer at Bird & Bird in London because finding the right pictures takes a lot of work.
If you know what you might want a space detective agency would be a great service.
This article appeared in print under the headline The space detectivesleader Nowhere to hide: the danger of satellite spie e
#Rainbow galaxies reveal why cosmos is full of spirals (Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/ SMA/CARMA/IRAM/J. Ueda et al.
Each entry in this visual catalogue of psychedelic pictures captures a violent collision of galaxies revealing for the first time how galaxies like the Milky way form.
These images show the carbon monoxide gas detected in neighbouring galaxies 40 to 600 million light years from Earth in their final stages of merging.
Out of 37 galaxies observed these 30 all show gas rotating around the centre of the galaxy meaning they are disc galaxies in the making.
For the first time there is observational evidence for merging galaxies that could result in disc galaxies. This is a large and unexpected step towards understanding the mystery of the birth of disc galaxies says Junko Ueda from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Ueda and her team made the observations using data from the ALMA radio telescope. Computer simulations suggested that
when galaxies merge they usually form a single blob-shaped galaxy classed as elliptical. However most of the galaxies in the universe are shaped pancake disc galaxies such as lenticular galaxies and our own spiral Milky way.
As this rogues'gallery of galactic mergers shows a disc-shaped offspring is a common result of a collision.
Journal reference: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series DOI: 10.1088/0067-0049/214/1
#Water-splitter could make hydrogen fuel on Mars Making fuel on site for a return trip to Mars may be a step closer.
A cunning way to split water into oxygen and hydrogen in two distinct steps could be a boon to both astronauts
and future Earthlings enabling them to use renewable energy sources for making hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells can power vehicles ranging from cars to submarines and rockets.
They can also heat buildings and double as portable power-packs for computers or other kit used in the field.
That means renewable energy sources like wind or sunlight which are often patchy are not reliable enough.
which make fuel from sunlight just like plants says Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow UK.
or for making fuel on Mars to power a rocket back to Earth. It is unclear
#Supernova find backs dark energy and universe expansion Astronomers have had long a dark secret: one of the cornerstones of the Nobel prizewinning discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating had never been tested directly.
The discovery hinged on the assumption that certain kinds of supernovae detonate in thermonuclear explosions that have fixed a amount of energy
but hard evidence that this was remained the case lacking. Now more than 15 years later we finally have firm proof that such supernovae explode as expected.
In 1998 astronomers used measurements of the distances of various type IA supernovae to show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
which they attributed to a mysterious dark energy pushing the cosmos apart. Astrophysicists theorised that the reason all type IA supernovae have the same brightness is that they are thermonuclear detonations in
which a white dwarf star somehow reaches a critical mass of about 1. 4 solar masses and explodes.
But this central idea had never been confirmed because no type IA had gone off near Earth in recent decades.
That changed on 21 january when Steve Fossey of University college London and his students stumbled upon a type IA supernova in M82 or the Cigar galaxy.
At 11.4 million light years away SN 2014j is the closest such explosion in decades. Eugene Churazov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching Germany and colleagues observed SN 2014j with the INTEGRAL gamma-ray telescope.
They found the classic signature of a thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf. The process begins with the compression of the white dwarf leading to the formation of nickel-56
which decays to cobalt-56 which in turn decays to a stable isotope of iron producing characteristic gamma rays.
Nobody had seen directly these gamma rays says Churazov. Using SN 2014j's gamma rays the team estimated that the mass of nickel-56 that decayed to be about 0. 6 solar masses within the range predicted by models.
That means the status of type IA supernovae as standard candles is secure. But there are still a few different ways for the explosion to happen
which could change the way astronomers interpret these supernovae in the future. In the favoured model called the single degenerate system a white dwarf reaches its critical mass by stealing material from an ordinary companion star.
In an alternative double degenerate model two white dwarfs orbiting each other cause the explosion either by merging or by one poaching matter from the other.
Churazov and his colleagues'observations support the single degenerate model. A second team however favours the double degenerate scenario.
Miguel Pérez-Torres of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia in Granada Spain and colleagues used the European VLBI Network of radio telescopes spread across Europe and China to study SN 2014j.
In a single degenerate system the shock wave from the white dwarf explosion should smash into the surrounding gas from the companion star generating radio waves.
so concluded SN 2014j probably began as two white dwarfs. Robert Kirshner of Harvard university who studies type IA supernovae is convinced not yet.
but astronomers would have to account for multiple types of supernovae. One has to care about this
now that we are in an era of precision cosmology says Pérez-Torres. No wonder Kirshner is thrilled to have a nearby type IA to study in detail.
#Spot ET's waste heat for chance to find alien life RATHER than searching for aliens phoning home scientists are looking for signs of the homes themselves.
A new project proposing that galaxy-spanning alien civilisations should generate detectable heat has turned up a few dozen galaxies that hold promise as harbours for life.
The best-known technique used to search for tech-savvy aliens is eavesdropping on their communications with each other.
A galaxy should emit about 10 per cent of its light in the mid-infrared range says team leader Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State university.
though it could also be a sign of more prosaic processes such as rapid star formation or an actively feeding black hole at the galaxy's centre.
The team's preliminary survey suggests that such galaxies are rare but they are out there.
We have found several dozen galaxies giving out a superlative amount of mid-infrared light says Wright.
Could that mean we have already found alien civilisations that have spread across galaxies? If by'found them'you mean that WISE detected the waste heat from them then yes that's right
The next step is to look at the stars and galaxies that raised the infrared flag in the WISE survey
and figure out if there are more ordinary processes at work. This effort is important because it tries to resolve the question of extraterrestrial life scientifically using the laws of chemistry
and physics that govern the universe says astronomer Geoff Marcy of the University of California Berkeley.
Even if the effort doesn't discover intelligent aliens it is still doing solid science says Marchis.
what because it's cataloguing the mid-infrared of our stars and galaxies he says.
Like our exoplanet search and using rovers to look for microbes on Mars this search for extraterrestrial life is driving useful science.
This article appeared in print under the headline Spot ET's waste heat for chance to find alien lif f
#Largest laser gives diamond a record-setting squeeze Diamond has been subjected to the wrath of the world's largest laser
The results hint at the mysterious conditions deep inside giant planets. The dense atmospheres of gas giants Jupiter and Saturn contain carbon.
Chemical modelling suggests pressure deep inside the planets would crush it into a rain of diamond chips
and perhaps create chunks of diamond large enough to impress even the Kardashians. But until now no one had been able to replicate such pressures On earth
The team's data can now be used to improve models of gas giants and the suspected diamond in their depths.
These findings contribute to an ongoing effort to put together an understanding of the cores of giant planets says Stevenson.
Nikku Madhusudhan at the University of Cambridge says the results can also aid our understanding of the insides of diamond planets.
These exoplanets are rocky like Earth but are rich in carbon rather than silica and may contain large layers of diamond.
because we can now use direct experimental data to model the deep interiors of carbon-rich planets says Madhusudhan.
#Cool planet hints at potential for life in double stars It's a cool planet in a tight spot.
A frigid world about 3000 light years away offers the first evidence that rocky planets can form in Earthlike orbits even
Although this planet probably cannot support life as we know it the discovery greatly expands the places we can look for potentially habitable worlds outside our solar system.
In a binary star system the two partners are locked in an orbital embrace. Astronomers have found a handful of planets that orbit both partners in close binary pairs.
But no one was convinced that a planet could orbit just one star at a sufficient distance to host life.
Most stars are part of binary systems and a significant fraction of these are close binary systems so if you want to maximise the places you can look for habitable planets you're going to want to look at these close binaries as well says Scott Gaudi at Ohio State university (OSU) in Columbus. Gaudi
and his team used a technique called gravitational microlensing to study a binary system with two red dwarfs small stars that are dimmer than the sun. The distance between the stars is about 10 to 15 times that of Earth
and the sun. The team found a planet about twice the mass of Earth orbiting just one of the two stars at about the same distance as we are to our home star.
Some scientists argue that the planet formation process would get too disrupted if a star has a tight stellar companion
and the further it is from the star the more difficult it would be for planets to form.
But this discovery argues that yes indeed at least in this system of two red dwarfs you can form planets at these sorts of longer distances says Gaudi.
Jean-Philipe Beaulieu at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics in France called the newfound planet an important discovery.
This shows more than ever that our solar system is not the paradigm in our galaxy says Beaulieu.
While the planet is most likely rocky based on its mass its surface is a frigid-213°C That's
because at its orbital distance it does not get enough heat from its dim host star.
But the same planet orbiting a sun-like star in a binary system would be in the habitable zone where conditions could support liquid water
and perhaps life as we know it. The discovery was announced the same week that other scientists sounded a note of caution on exoplanet finds.
An analysis led by astronomer Paul Robertson at Pennsylvania State university concluded that Gliese 581 d and g two of the first potentially habitable worlds ever found are created actually illusions by sunspots on the parent star.
Gaudi's co-author Andrew Gould also at OSU says his team's evidence for the existence of their frozen planet is airtight.
Microlensing detects planets by watching how their gravity affects the light of a distant background star.
As one star passes in front of another as seen from Earth light from the background star is bent gravitationally
and magnified projecting images next to the foreground star. But if the foreground star hosts a planet the world's gravity can sometimes eliminate one of these images.
The planet isn't blocking the background star's light. It's just that the mathematics of focusing is disrupted by the planet's gravity he says.
There's absolutely no doubt that what we've detected is a rocky planet in a binary star system adds Gould.
Ten thousand years from now people will go visit this system and find out that it's exactly
what we say it is. Beaulieu also expressed confidence in the frozen exoplanet discovery: In the case of the planet announced by Gould's team stellar variability could not mimic the observed signal.
This is a very robust detection. Journal reference: Scienc n
#Swedish space rock may be piece of early life puzzle A fossil meteorite unlike anything seen before has been uncovered in a Swedish quarry.
The mysterious rock may be known the first piece of the bullet that sparked an explosion of life on early Earth.
Roughly 100 fossil meteorites have emerged from the limestone quarry west of Stockholm which is being mined for flooring.
All of the meteorites are part of an iron-poor class called the L chondrites. They date back about 470 million years to the Ordovician period
when Earth experienced a mysterious burst of new species. Now miners working in the Swedish quarry have found a meteorite fragment that is not an L chondrite.
Analysing its microscopic crystals Birger Schmitz at Lund University and his colleagues found that the rock dates to the same time period
but is of a kind completely unknown to science. About 515 million years ago our planet was going through an evolutionary slump.
A burst of diversity that happened during the Cambrian period had tapered off and few new types of animals were emerging.
Mysteriously about 25 million years later life sprang back into action in the early part of the Ordovician generating loads of species. So
Fossil meteorites from the quarry suggest that during this time impacts were tens to hundreds of times more frequent than they are today.
The meteorites may have been born when two asteroids collided and broke apart between Mars and Jupiter.
The larger object spawned the cloud of L chondrites that bombarded Earth for about 10 million years.
According to one popular idea this intense meteor shower caused just enough destruction to open up ecological niches
and drive life to diversify into a richer assortment. But the fate and identity of the smaller asteroid has long been a mystery.
The fact that the latest fossil comes from the same rock layers as the L chondrites suggests that it is a piece of that second asteroid says Schmitz.
The theory says that most of the smaller asteroid was vaporised during the collision so it also makes sense that only scant fragments of it would remain.
David Harper at Durham University UK agrees. The team may at last have identified the impactor responsible for the break up of the parent body of the L chondrite meteorites he says.
In which case he adds it is a direct remnant of one of the most violent events in our solar system's history.
This was documented the largest asteroid break up event of the past 3 billion years says Schmitz.
The asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period believed to have killed the non-avian dinosaurs was tiny in comparison.
Journal reference: Earth and Planetary science Letters DOI: 10.1016/j. epsl. 2014.05.03 3
#How to cash in on cheap Earth-watching satellites THERE ARE some big plans brewing for small satellites. With hordes of cheap orbiters filling the skies researchers
and start-ups are promising a powerful new perspective on earthly activities that range from global commerce to perfecting the art of mining landfills for recyclable materials.
On 10 june Google acquired Skybox Imaging a 5-year-old Silicon valley firm for $500 million.
The company already has a 1-metre cube satellite called Skysat-1 in orbit and has plans for 23 more each with high-resolution imaging and video capability.
The satellite's design is an iteration of the diminutive 10-centimetre Cubesats that have been used for scientific research since 2003.
It wants to hire satellites already in orbit to prospect landfill sites for potentially valuable materials.
Then there are rare-earth metals that could be retrieved from discarded electronics along with bits of tin copper and gold.
That's where satellites come in. If the satellite gives us 1000 potential sites from the 25000 in the UK we would then use drone reconnaissance to get a richer picture of say the wood cover
and surface profile Terra Recovery cofounder Greg Fitzgerald said last week at a meeting of the UK government's space business advocacy group in London.
We could also use other sensors to assess methane outgassing levels and explosion risk. Initially the firm plans to use information collected by European space agency satellites
which have a 1-metre resolution. But it could later switch to satellites like the 28 imaging cubesats that the firm Planet Labs of San francisco already has in orbit.
Planet Labs ultimately wants a fleet of 100 of the tiny satellites enough to refresh its imagery of the entire planet once a day says Arin Jumpasut a Planet Labs imaging engineer.
That will make it good for monitoring fast-changing issues like refugees leaving conflict areas or deforestation he says.
#Crystal cocoons kept bacteria safe in space ASTEROIDS have a killer reputation taking the blame for death and destruction on massive scales.
But results fresh from a space experiment show ancient impacts may have been vital for cradling the first life On earth.
Several hundred million years after Earth formed when life was emerging our young planet had an atmosphere oceans and primordial continents.
But it did not yet have an ozone layer to shield the surface from the sun's harshest ultraviolet rays.
Because UV radiation can damage DNA that would have made it difficult for any but the most extreme forms of life to survive.
In 2002 a team led by astrobiologist Charles Cockell at the University of Edinburgh UK discovered a unique group of cyanobacteria in Haughton crater in northern Canada.
and pressure of the asteroid or comet impact that made the crater about 23 million years ago.
while letting enough sunlight through to allow them to photosynthesise. Complex life evolved long before the crater formed
but there have been countless space rock strikes in Earth's history. That raised a whole bunch of questions about
whether the unique geology of impact craters could have been a good UV shield on the early Earth says Casey Bryce a member of Cockell's lab. Bryce
As part of the European space agency's EXPOSE mission the team sent some of the crater rocks to the International space station (ISS.
The bacteria received radiation doses far more intense than conditions on early Earth. When the samples were returned to the lab the microbes in the glass discs were dead.
The team's findings provide the first direct evidence that crystal cocoons formed by impacts might have been radiation-proof cradles for early life (International Journal of Astrobiology doi. org/tcs.
Asteroid and comet impacts are ubiquitous in the solar system so Pontefract thinks impacts could have helped kick-start life on rocky planets
and then shielded whatever emerged. Crater rocks could provide refuges even now for life on other planets such as Mars she says.
This article appeared in print under the headline Space rock strikes protected early lif f
#Impossibly heavy planet is the first'mega-Earth'Sly Stallone has nothing on this rocky heavyweight.
Twice the size of Earth and with 17 times our planet's mass Kepler-10c is so unusual that it has been placed in a brand new class of exoplanet.
Kepler-10c was discovered in 2011 by NASA's Kepler space telescope. The planet orbits a star that is about 560 light years away from us.
It has a radius slightly more than double that of Earth's a size that led astronomers to assume it was a shrunken version of gassy planet Neptune
which is four times larger than Earth. Now Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge Massachusetts and his colleagues have used the HARPS-N telescope in the Canary islands to pin down Kepler-10c's mass.
They found it is actually 17 times as heavy as Earth: more or less the same mass as Neptune.
But because Kepler-10c is much smaller then Neptune it must be an incredibly dense rocky world the like
of which has never been seen before. All the major existing planetary formation models were not predicting this type of planet
and it is why we could not believe our result at the beginning says Dumusque who presented the findings at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston this week.
But the team checked for a bevy of possible errors that might have been caused by the telescope itself
or by activity from the host star and they say a massive rocky world is the best explanation for the data.
Calculations by geophysicists previously suggested that gravity should compress planets so much that rocky worlds can't get bigger than twice Earth's size says Kepler team member Geoff Marcy at the University of California Berkeley.
This suggestion of a rocky planet 2. 3 times the size of Earth blows me away he says.
The team has dubbed Kepler-10c a mega-Earth because it is too heavy to fit into the super-Earth class of exoplanets
which are bigger than our home world but much lighter than Neptune. It is made probably from the same materials as Earth water silicates
and iron but in different proportions says Dumusque. Kepler-10c is denser than Earth but still it is far from being made of pure iron
which would be the physical limit for planets he says. Neighbouring planet Kepler-10b was already famous among planet hunters for being confirmed the first rocky world outside our solar system.
But it is very close to its star completing a full orbit in just 20 hours.
The more we find planets outside the solar system the more we are surprised by the diversity of these new worlds says Dumusque e
#Spacex unveils sleek reusable Dragon crew capsule First cargo now crew the uber-modern space taxi known as the Dragon V2 is ready for passengers.
At an unveiling ceremony yesterday complete with smoke effects and coloured lights Spacex CEO Elon musk gave the world its first glimpse of the upgraded Dragon spacecraft.
NASA is already using an unpiloted version of Dragon to send cargo to the International space station and return valuable gear and scientific experiments.
But Musk has wanted always Dragon to become a reusable ride for astronauts. The new vehicle has simple silvery walls seats for up to seven passengers and a set of flatscreen control panels.
The spacecraft can dock itself to the ISS without help from the space station's robotic arm.
But the most radical aspect of the redesign is the landing gear which will allow astronauts to set the spacecraft down on solid ground.
The current version of Dragon deploys a parachute as it descends and splashes down in the ocean.
Dragon V2 instead comes with a set of incredibly powerful Superdraco engines each capable of producing more than 70000 newtons of thrust.
The engines will allow astronauts to better manoeuvre in space as well as control their trajectory for re-entry.
You'll be able to land anywhere On earth with the accuracy of a helicopter Musk said during the event at Spacex headquarters in Hawthorne California.
The engines are encased in protective shells and they are set up in pairs so that if one fails the other can give a boost of power to compensate.
The Dragon V2 also has sturdier heat shields which brings Spacex a step closer to realising its goal of developing spacecraft that are fully and rapidly reusable.
Spacex has tested successfully a set of landing legs on a rocket used to send the uncrewed Dragon to the ISS
and Musk hopes to soon make it possible for rockets and crew capsules to simply be reloaded with propellant
and flown again much like commercial airplanes. As long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft we will never have true access to space says Musk.
Like passengers in today's commercial aeroplanes riders of the Dragon V2 won't get much leg room in the capsule's tight quarters.
But the craft does include touchscreen interfaces to control the spacecraft as well as manual buttons for critical functions that would be needed in case of emergency.
Passengers on the Dragon V2 won't get much leg room (Image: Spacex) NASA ASTRONAUTS are not set to ride in the Dragon V2 until 2017.
However a colony of mice and rats will make the journey on the next Spacex cargo launch becoming the private company's first mammalian passengers.
The rodents are set to spend six months on the ISS and will be the subjects of various experiments on the long-term effects of microgravity on mammal physiology.
The results will hopefully prove handy for Musk who hopes to eventually shuttle humans on the long trip to Mars
. When the Dragon V2 does launch with its first commercial crew the face of space travel is going to change.
It will no longer be heroic to go to space it will become a commodity and it's about time says John Logsdon a space policy expert at George washington University's Elliott School of International affairs in WASHINGTON DC.
What will count is what people do once they get there e
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